For the institute of Beeld & Geluid I participated in a session with several other visual makers. These sessions were intended to make you dive into the archival material of the institute to get inspired.
I got stuck at a fragment of the Hippie movement. The news, clearly being opinionated, did a critical item concerning the hippies of not really participating in ‘society’. What fascinated me the most was the transition to the next item, which showed chimpanzees, with the quote ‘here the hippies lay down in the park, CUT, just like these monkeys in the zoo’. It was such a clear depiction of how people, like the Hippies, who do not participate in de retrace of the current societal standards, were not seen as ‘valuable’ or ‘different’.
From this I wanted to create an image of the ‘homo insipiens’ or ‘unwise human’. A satirical twist of a monkey in a suit, having no clue what to do. It’s a statement of how society pretends to act ‘good’ for the benefit of everybody, but how it actually creates a lot of troubles on many different places in society.
